In a key scene from Kidnap, Imran Khan's second big movie of the year (following his lead role in Jaane Tu ... Ya Jaane Na), his character grips a phone to his ear as his nemesis, Vikrant Raina, tells him to go to hell.

"Hell is right here, Raina," he replies before hanging up.

"No it isn't!" I wanted to scream. "It's right here! In this god-forsaken cinema seat, from where I'm watching your lame, life-sapping performance!"

Imran Khan is a big star who's only going to get bigger here. He's very handsome, very well connected (he's related to the star Aamir Khan), and has the boring goody two-shoes appeal that captivates the typical Indian female. These qualities will continue to obscure the fact that he is possibly the most talentless, one-dimensional actor around. Compared with him, the average shop-window dummy is Robert De Niro at his methodical best. I've seen sideboards give more moving performances than this guy has managed in his first two films, both of which (inexplicably to me) have become hits.

Khan plays Kabir Sharma, a man seeking revenge having been imprisoned as an adolescent after he stole a billionaire's classic Mercedes soft-top in order to take his friend to hospital after he fell off a ladder at the orphanage where they both lived. God only knows how drunk the writers were when cooking up this script. In the process, he also unwittingly kidnaps the billionaire's spoilt daughter, Sonia (Minissha Lamba), putting her in a coma when he drives straight into a tree. Traumatised, the billionaire seeks the harshest penalty for him despite the cops' pleas that he's basically a good kid. That billionaire (worth $51.7billion, no less), was Vikrant Raina, played by Sanjay Dutt, upon whom Kabir wreaks the most stupid, most tedious and least plausible vengeance in cinema history.

Having suffered all sorts of floggings and stabbings in prison - all relayed in black-and-white animation during the opening credits - Kabir is released only to kidnap Sonia again, this time deliberately, holding her in a hideaway so he can phone Raina and force him to perform various absurd penances, including stealing a business rival's illegal fortune, breaking someone out of jail and finally shooting a stranger in a nightclub.

But Kabir's plan is complicated after he gawps at Sonia's trashily displayed cleavage and falls in love with her, and also after Raina hires a top-notch private detective to help catch him. The detective fits a few cameras in the garden, and tells him he's also had caller ID installed on the phone. Raina nods with satisfaction knowing that India's best security expert has kitted him out with a standard BT home package. When the phone loudly rings, the words "Incoming Call" duly flash on a laptop and the detective excitedly informs Raina that "We have an incoming call". But Kabir thwarts their cunning by deviously switching to an office line. The laptop flashes "Restricted Number" and the detective gnashes his teeth, conceding to Raina that "It's a restricted number".

Equally hilarious is the scene in which Raina has to break Kabir's friend from jail. Raina's beautiful ex-wife (Vidya Malvade), sporting a huge Dolly Parton bouffant, a mini-skirt and high heels, drives a huge lorry to the prison gates in the middle of the night and is stopped by a guard who asks her why she's there. "I'm a human rights activist," she replies, and is ushered in without further ado.

To cut a long and very boring story short, Kabir's games with Raina are only a strategy to make him say sorry for putting him inside - which he eventually does. Sonia is returned unharmed, Raina and his ex get back together, and Kabir lands a job in IT - the textbook happy Indian ending.

Terrible as it is, the film is moderately redeemed by Sanjay Dutt. One of Bollywood's most charismatic actors, he has an overweight, jaded, vulnerable yet menacing presence akin to John Travolta in Pulp Fiction - only better. His face teeters between seeming deeply kind and horribly evil. If Tarantino were to do a Bollywood epic (which he should, given his genius for kitsch and hysteria), Dutt is the man to star in it. He was eminently watchable throughout, and the entertaining Punjabi song routine he performs shows he can still move - albeit slower than before.

However, replacing Khan with a cardboard cut-out and comic book speech bubbles would have produced a better central performance and would at least have added a broader comedic flavour. If he wants to be more than just a pretty boy Khan needs to watch Dutt and learn a great deal more.